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Hi Colorado, I just got introduced to Kevin Hines who is bipolar, via a television segment I watched yesterday. I looked him up and he is my new hero. His message is related to mental illness and suicide but you may find some insight in his message for your own reasons. I sure did. He reminded me I am responsible for my own actions and thoughts. I needed to be reminded of that right now. Yeah, because of my food allergies I have to leave all that junk food alone. I can't even have it in my house. I wouldn't consider what I can eat as boring. I can have hot dogs, pizza, hamburgers, etc but I have to eat clean, organic meats with no fillers or acid washes, fresh vegetables and prepare everything myself. It's a bit more work, but well worth it. On the positive side Breyer's Natural Vanilla ice cream has limited ingredients, not all that stuff in it. And Hershey's is making a chocolate syrup now with only 5 ingredients. But that might be to tempting for you to keep around the house. :hug: Starman, lol, you are taking me back a few years. |
I watched a youtube video last night regarding this very subject.
The two people discussing this matter are both psychologist one was the interviewer the other was the interviewee. The interviewee had a brother commit suicide 20 years ago. He delved into the souls life after suicide through a channeler and a machine ( at Monroe college I think it is in Virginia they have computers are some thing that helps the brain reach deep meditative states without being experianced. ) He has been in contact with his brother since death. The first thing he learned is there is only life after death. Depending on cause of death determines how those on the otherside handle you. Example: if you had a traumatic passing and suffered damage to the soul they may put your soul in a form of what we would call a coma while they psychically help you repair the damage. Then if you committed suicide when you watch your life review you also view what you missed out on by killing yourself. This is a summary if you want to watch the Vid i think it was called "The souls life after suicide" by New Knowledge? They have a rainbow yin-yang logo. Namaste` |
I think it's different for every individual when they cross over.
Helen Greaves who wrote several books back in the 1950's? 60's?, I believe, channeled her friend, Frances Banks after she passed. Frances, in real life was a nun. After she passed she worked in a 'hospital' where she tended damaged souls. Some were put in a coma-like state and the staff used various methods to heal them. |
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In my early 20s is when my behavior got reckless. It is a wonder I made it through that decade but I do think my soul saw fit to give me a body that doesn’t handle controlled substances well because they made me very sick so I could never intake enough to really do me in. I then managed to make a life for myself and thought I had gotten a handle on all of it until a life event in middle age sent me into outright suicidal ideations. It was a harrowing few years but a part of me always knew, despite every fiber of my being wanting to commit suicide, I knew in my heart I could not do it because it wouldn’t fix anything. It made the feelings worse, like not being able to scratch an unbearably painful itch that you desperately need to scratch but I feel it clarifies that I have done it in a past life in an attempt and that I now know it isn’t the answer. So when I hear of someone who goes through with it I understand that they very well don’t have that information yet. They don’t have the ‘Knowing’ that it won’t fix things. So yes, I do think that it is a misguided solution brought on by a person not knowing what else to do to help themselves feel better. At least in the case of those with cognitive depression. Obviously those who are terminally ill or believe it is the righteous thing to do for their religion have other agendas but in some ways I think that they as well will see that it isn’t the answer or a noble thing to do. Quote:
In any event, I have had a lovely life by most standards. I had an authoritarian father but most were in my time. He seemed angry a lot but he was never mean, cruel or physically abusive yet I struggled with my self view that eventually turned into outright self rejection because I never addressed it. I see my path to near suicide in the same way. I never addressed the issue early on and it grew into a monster that wanted to annihilate me. I don’t know the answer but I know the stigma attached with depression at the time was very damaging and caused me to hide my pain, which unaddressed turned on me. I am glad to see it is more acceptable to be open about it because I suspect most suicidal people aren’t suicidal on purpose they just have no clue how to fix the pain and have this impulse driving them that is quite frankly, extremely hard to resist. It feels like you Need to do it is the best way I can describe. Resisting the impulse takes a lot of willpower. When you are at a place of lost hope willpower is not all that high. In any event, I think if there was more acceptance when I was younger I may have avoided the decent into darkness in middle age. I feel proud now that I have survived myself and I feel liberated from having to run from the dark feelings but it has been a struggle my whole life. Hopefully things are turning around in regards to mental health issues and people will get help sooner before it reaches a crisis point and the impulses and/or dark feelings are stronger than they can handle. |
Michelle and Starman, I really thought I was the only one who dabbled in dangerous behaviors, ignoring illnesses and engaging in bad habits. Death wish? I've thought that at times. I really am not ready to leave yet. But there is that instinct to attempt to want to go Home. Kind of like a "whoops!" attitude.:rolleyes:
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Too bad suicide has such a negative connotation.
The first response when someone says to commit suicide is often: Don't, you can get over it ! Like or there is some kind of mental illness going on or there is a good reason not to. Like life can be so beautiful, suggesting the person in question should "fight" because it can be and at this moment is just a bit lost and death is less beautiful per definition. "fight", the idea that one needs to fight, in this case thoughts that would lead to suicide. Thoughts that are considered negative, because suicide is a negative thing that should be prevented at all times because life is beautiful. Not seeing this is then considered weak. Suicide considered giving up. Some want to die in dignity. Some cannot take the pressure society puts on them. There are many factors that affect the suicidal person. Suicide is the end of great suffering. |
Michelle11, that is quite a riveting story which you have shared; thank you for bringing that to light and maybe others by reading it can come to light as well, as Linen53 has mentioned. I can definitely relate to it myself as well. I never thought of myself as having high risk dangerous behavior but I did realize that I was continually making myself a target of close calls that could do me a lot of damage, and I did not feel like I was consciously doing this, but maybe it was a subconscious death wish.
I had low self-esteem, and after coming back to the U.S. from Vietnam, at the tender age of twenty, I did not know whether to be proud of my military service or to be ashamed of it. Basically, I hated myself, and while I did not want to outright commit suicide I did constantly put myself in situations that where dangerously damaging. It was almost as if I wanted to punish myself because I did not like me. This was reinforced by others here in the U.S. who spit on us returning Vietnam veterans, called us “baby-killers," and “war mongers,” etc. An even though I was a combat medic in Vietnam, went into villages and medically treated people regardless of their nationality or politics, delivered babies, bound wounds and helped to save lives, etc., I was still ostracized upon my return home to the U.S. I have shared here at SF many times how I lost my eyesight in Vietnam and was blind for about 5-years, went though more than a dozen eye surgeries over that period to regain my eyesight. I had a Christian minister tell me that my loss of eyesight was God punishing me for my sins. There was little to no sympathy for my situation and that added to my low self-esteem. This was very hard on me, and it was also one of the reasons Vietnam veterans in general stayed sicker longer. The VA nor the civilian counseling community did not recognize PTSD back then as a mental illness. So lots of veterans turned to self medicating with street drugs. Lots of veterans committed suicide because of a lack of treatment, ignored by the professional counseling community, and also being outcast by society. I am glad to see today that veterans are being taught yoga and quiet meditation by the VA to deal with PTSD and for the most part it is working. Suicide rates among veterans have dramatically decreased due to this. Fortunately for me I learned how to meditate and quiet my mind back in the late 1970’s; a guru from India taught me, and without that tool who knows what path I might have taken. PTSD today is acknowledged in non-military veterans, victims of sexual abuse, first responders, etc., but it was Vietnam veterans who fought very hard, and won, to get PTSD recognized as a legitimate mental illness by the professional counseling community. I felt evil, I felt I was evil; it was not cognitive, it was not a label that I embraced, rather it was a strong feeling that engulfed me. I was filled with rage at the universe, and it had no rhyme or reason. A feeling that I struggled with and I really did not like myself. I had to get to a place where I liked myself, I had to fall in love with myself. Quiet meditation and my spiritual practice helped me to do that. A transformation process of changing my vibration from this icky feeling of self-loathing to a peaceful and loving feeling that permeated by entire being. Surrounding myself with positive, loving, and compassionate people helped. However, for a long time I hid in marijuana and other drugs. Speaking only for myself, that only carried me so far and I had to find a more natural, non-substance induced, way of transforming my vibration. I think the Great Work of Humanity is Self Transformation. Today I am a process in progress and have come a long way from where I was, with greater, more positive, transformations going on within me all the while. Talking about death and suicide was a taboo subject for a very long tine in the U.S. People just did not discuss it. When my grandmother died I was a little kid and was not allowed to attend the funeral because in my family back then children did not attend funerals. Rather children were told fairy tales about death, and otherwise “protected” from the reality of death, in all its’ forms, including suicide. People move from one place to another trying to get away from something, often not realizing that, that something they are trying to get away from is within them, and they have to work at eradicating what they are trying to escape right where they are at regardless of their situation. Yes, often a change in environment does help but also often, we find whatever conditioning we had over there came with us over here, or vice versa. Peace and Good Journey:smile: |
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I believe in predetermination because I'd like to think that there is some kind of rhyme and reason for all of this, otherwise what's the point? Is Spiritual development nothing more than a series of serendipitous happenchance? Predetermination also means taking responsibility for what happens in my Life because my Free Will was exercised as Spirit, and that frees me from the victim mentality. Things don't happen TO me they happen BECAUSE of me. It wasn't pure luck that my suicide attempt didn't happen. The curious thing about Spirituality is that it's based on mentality. |
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You had a clearly traumatic experience being in a warzone. As well you had a very misguided country that turned on you because of a lack of perception and group mentality. I think in many ways, we both took what happened to us, how people treated us personal as though what other humans say and do defines our worth. To me that is cognitive in nature because we are using our rational brain to define ourselves in a negative light. It isn’t truth but our brain perceives it as so. A shift in our perceptions of ourselves away from other human’s opinions and from being human in general can help tremendously at healing the need to do ourselves in. So I’d be interested to hear your perspective on why you think it isn’t cognitive. I’m not saying you are wrong. Actually the opposite. I like to hear varying points of view because that is how I learned about myself and see things I wasn’t seeing before. In the end, I think in my case, I was born a sensitive person, someone prone to stronger than normal emotions. I suspect that my father appearing to be angry a lot made me feel like my life was threatened. Even though I was just being extra sensitive he seemed hostile to my sensitive nature. It caused me to fall into a state of constant anxiety worried about upsetting him. The state of being in constant anxiety molded my brain into a kind of permanent state of flight or flight. Everyone and everything turned into a threat to me. I tried to push through all that fear as best I could and I did ok. But the constant criticism undermined my self confidence and so self doubt and a perception that everything thing I did was wrong caused me to basically want to sit life out. If I can’t get it right it’s best to sit in a corner and try and not be noticed. Trying to suppress my fear and lack of confidence led to depression and wanting to escape life, which as I said, unaddressed eventually built up into out right self rejection and a desire to do myself in. As a young person I did not see the path clearly. I just felt bad and felt I had no reason to feel bad. But there was definitely a dotted line to how I got from feeling homesick as a child to the misunderstanding that I was somehow evil and needed to be destroyed. Ultimately it was my rational brain trying to sort out how to avoid the threats I felt were everywhere. Even though I was never in any physical danger our fight or flight response can get triggered simply from feeling emotional threats. So that is why I see my path as cognitive in nature and not biological or a product of mental illness. I developed mental instability and became disturbed as you said, but because of making assumptions about myself and life that were wrong. Basically disturbed is a very good word to describe how I was handling life. Unhinged and disturbed by it. But I think it all started from cognitive misunderstandings I picked up as a child that got embedded into my subconscious self view and how I perceived the world. But I would love to hear your take on it. Your story seems a lot more riveting than mine. In any event, one of the reasons I have changed my mind about the idea that if we suicide we have a harder, worse life the next one is because my life by all accounts was pretty normal. No real abuse, just a lack of any positive reinforcement and not being taught good coping skills. As well being mistakenly being led to believe anger was the solution to all problems. My suspicion is that I had rougher lives in the past and could not stop myself from suicide. I had a few dreams that seem to indicate a few much more difficult lives. So to give myself a fighting chance I took on a less traumatizing life. In a sense I was traumatized enough because of my sensitivity to strong emotions. I didn’t need more motivation than a typical authoritarian father who had a loud bark. It was motivation enough to send me into the challenge of surviving myself and coming back from a state of self loathing. I'm glad we are moving past it. I definitely feel lighter than I have for most of my life. |
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